Judge confirms link between Apple and patent troll Rockstar

Rockstar, the massive patent troll in which Apple is a majority shareholder, sued Google for patent infringement. Of course, Rockstar filed suit in the Eastern District of Texas, the usual venue for patent trolls. Because of Apple’s involvement, Google motioned to have the suit take place in California instead, where it stands a much greater chance of winning. Judge Claudia Wilken sides with Google. She states in the ruling:

Google and Apple’s rivalry in the smartphone industry is well-documented. Apple’s founder stated that he viewed Android as a “rip off” of iPhone features and intended to “destroy” Android by launching a “thermonuclear war.” Defendants’ litigation strategy of suing Google customers is consistent with Apple’s particular business interest… This ‘scare the customer and run’ tactic advances Apple’s interest in interfering with Google’s Android business.

Every now and then, someone just gets it. Judge Wilken looked beyond the constructed sham companies and legal cobwebs – such as Rockstar setting up a sham company in Delaware with zero California contacts and transferring all patents-in-suit to that company a day before it sued Google.

The world needs more judges like this. In addition – it seems like Jobs’ remarks about Android are catching up to the company. Delightful.

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Google and Apple’s rivalry in the smartphone industry is well-documented. Apple’s founder stated that he viewed Android as a “rip off” of iPhone features and intended to “destroy” Android by launching a “thermonuclear war.”

Even though having competition seems to be beneficial for innovation. For example, Internet Explorer began to stagnate before Firefox came along. Competition from Gmail resulted in Microsoft increasing the amount of free space for Hotmail accounts etc

Even as an Apple-hater you could give them a little bit more credit than that, couldn’t you? They may not have invented anything earth-shattering, but they did manage to put it all in a package that seems to appeal to people’s egos while also serving their needs. It’s not an easy thing to find a spot where you can sell expensive gadgets which people generally view as status symbols.

Even as an Apple-hater you could give them a little bit more credit than that, couldn’t you? They may not have invented anything earth-shattering, but they did manage to put it all in a package that seems to appeal to people’s egos while also serving their needs. It’s not an easy thing to find a spot where you can sell expensive gadgets which people generally view as status symbols.

To me, the most influencial Apple products are like Street Fighter 2. Sure, SF2 wasn’t the first video game, and it wasn’t the first fighting game either. It wasn’t even the first fighting game with rounds and a 6 button layout, and arguably its most influencial feature, the combo system, was a complete accident. And you could make a convincing argument that better fighting games than the Street Fighter series have come out over the years(depending on taste, of course).

Yet it was massively successful and pretty much the game that started the fighting game genre, and gave the rest of the industry a template to work from. But if SF2 were an Apple product, there’d be haters out there screaming that it deserves no credit at all, because they didn’t actually invent anything new. They just took what had already been done before and repackaged it for the masses.

Of course, I’m sure my post will get modded down by the Apple haters, as it seems that many of them would rather have their testicles carved off with a wooden cooking spoon than give Apple even a little goddamn credit.

Of course, I’m sure my post will get modded down by the Apple haters, as it seems that many of them would rather have their testicles carved off with a wooden cooking spoon than give Apple even a little goddamn credit.

Nah, that’s more of a Mortal Kombat or Killer Instinct style maneuver.

The problem is that if we continued your example to Apple, Apple and the popular press would be claiming that APple invented the video game industry. Or at the very least the fighting game genre. And in reality SF2 did neither. It was just as you said, a very popular game. And if Apple took that kind of credit in public, we would all be yawning about this article.

The problem is that if we continued your example to Apple, Apple and the popular press would be claiming that APple invented the video game industry.

Sounds like a strawman to me. Do you have any quotes of Jobs saying they invented the smartphone?

Or at the very least the fighting game genre. And in reality SF2 did neither. It was just as you said, a very popular game.

It was more than just a popular fighting game. It was the fighting game that made fighting games popular. You can basically catagorize fighting games like this: those that came before SF2 and those that came after. Same with the iPhone, and the iPad as well.

Am I saying that the iPhone is the greatest smartphone on the planet? No. Am I trying to justify Apple’s patent litigations? No. I just think the iPhone was a very influential and innovative product for its time.

It was more than just a popular fighting game. It was the fighting game that made fighting games popular. You can basically catagorize fighting games like this: those that came before SF2 and those that came after. Same with the iPhone, and the iPad as well.

I like this analogy and agree with it. Of course, it breaks down when you consider the fact that Capcom didn’t try to sue every company that made a subsequent 6-button fighting game after them out of existence. Capcom enjoyed their success and built upon it without attempting to lock everyone out from developing their own fighting games. And the video game culture owes a lot to Street Fighter 2 and all of the fighting games inspired by Street Fighter 2 as a result.

I’ll give apple credit for a few things – the macbook pro / the mac book pro retina – both incredibly sexy and very good hardware.

Apple has pushed display technology like crazy up until their retina push display tech’s were generally just rubbish 1320×768 and other horrible resolutions – you would be lucky to get 720p on a 13″ laptop -> after apples move into retina displays you now get every 13″ sporting a 1080p display and most 15s sporting a 2k display – they pushed this, they made this a competitive bullet point. There were other manufacturers pushing high res displays but apple made it main stream. This I absolutely respect about them but on the flip side the res on the original 15″ mbp was rubbish and it was a tn display :/ …

Another nod to them is pushing ssd speed, all mbp retinas and air’s now come with ssd’s using the pci express bus rather than sata – again pushing boundaries – this stuff in the oem pc world is really expensive and by apple pushing it it will make other manufacturers adopt it which will drop the price of the tech for everyone so we all win.

What I dont like is the stagnation of their desktop /laptop UI – its looking very dated. I’ve used osx, linux and windows and osx – I dont know how any one can put up with its window management it is just pathetic – it does so many things that make me want to just smash my head against the wall as its just so retarded. They need to fix window management – they need to give users more choice (give us an advanced button so we can tailor things to how we like).

The other thing I have to respect them for is pushing Unix – Linux and OSX are really 2 sides of the same coin, many developers have moved from linux to OSX just because it provides the same tools the same shells but in an “easier to use” desktop – also helped by the mac book air / pro form factors – Apple have also benefited from this massively most of the web server environments out there are Linux and by supporting Unix they get free development and access to everything being developed for Linux – they need to also realise this, because if they don’t they will get bitten in the ass.

Anyway with all that said i’ll stick to kubuntu on my 13″ dell developer laptop sporting a 1080p display and costing half as much as a mbp retina 13″.

I wont get into the phone battle because the more I see it the more retarded it has become to me – who cares its a phone, it runs apps I get my emails I can do some light browsing the rest of it is just meh – and frankly touch screens are rubbish for any real typing. (Can you imagine trying to write this ~3000 word comment on a touch screen ? arrgghhh)

Yet it was massively successful and pretty much the game that started the fighting game genre, and gave the rest of the industry a template to work from. But if SF2 were an Apple product, there’d be haters out there screaming that it deserves no credit at all, because they didn’t actually invent anything new. They just took what had already been done before and repackaged it for the masses.

If SF2 were an Apple product, then there would be legions of SF2 fanboys constantly flip-flopping between childish triumphalism (driven by a compulsive need to brag about the object of their psychological tranference at every opportunity) – and impotently raging about “SF2 haters,” like some unique species of lower primate that’s evolved just enough to realize that lazily throwing around the “hater” label is more sanitary than flinging their own feces.

That is, if they weren’t already busy indulging in their persecution complex/fantasies & whining about the “unfairness” of all criticism of SF2 – with “unfair” being code for “insufficient speal treatment” (in other words, narcissism-by-proxy).

Please name one thing that Google, Microsoft, Dell, Mercedes (etc etc) invented and I will tell you who did almost that same thing first.

A valid point, given the way that online comment sections are infested by Google, Microsoft, Dell, and Mercedes (etc etc) fanboys who constantly try to give those companies undeserved “original cause” credit for any market or class of product they’ve ever been involved in… wait, no, that’s Apple’s fanboys I was thinking of. My bad.

If you are loose enough in your definition of what is the same, there are no inventions, only innovation on top of existing ideas.

“But… but… but… even if they didn’t invent it, they still, uh… hmmm, what’s a word with enough positive connotations to imply that they deserve special credit, but is still vague enough to give me room to waffle and backpedal if anyone calls me on it? Oh! I know, I’ll just say they ‘popularized’ it, that’s the ticket!”

Karl Friedrich Benz was a German engine designer and car engineer, generally regarded as the inventor of the first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine, and together with Bertha Benz, pioneering founder of the automobile manufacturer Mercedes-Benz.

But it is true that had Karl Benz not invented the car someone else (like for example Gottlieb Daimler) would have invented it, within months of the original invention, making the whole concept of patents highly questionable.

I don’t see why people waste their time concerning themselves with what exactly a company has invented or innovated on their own. In what way does that make any difference to the end-user? The only thing you as consumers should worry about is which product best suits your needs. Who makes it, who invented what, etc. makes no difference what-so-ever.

And don’t get started on any moral-based nonsense. For-profit companies operate in the best interest of increasing revenue. None of these companies deserve or have earned a halo. Pledging allegiance to any of them doesn’t do or mean anything other than you’ve got blinders on.

I will guess what the issue is. We are not talking about cars here. If we were, your comments would be spot on, who cares. But we are IT people (for the most part). This is what we do. Some of us may even be somewhat well known. To have someone in your community take credit and rewrite history for what they didn’t do, tends to hit closer to home than if this was Ford vs Chevy.

I understand some people are going to get emotional over this as, like you said, the issue may hit closer to home. My counter to that is saying lets keep things in perspective here by remembering that none of these companies stand on moral high ground. There is no good guys in this fight. Any of them would sneak a punch to the nuts in if they could. That being the case, I can’t praise anyone simply because they’re less shrewd in business.

I can’t even agree that Apple is trying to rewrite history because at the end of the day, nobody outside of a very small handful of people really gives a shit who the first to use rounded corners on a cell phone was. So, who would they be rewriting history for? That small handful of people who know better, or everyone else who couldn’t care less? And to what gain?

What Apple did in the late 90’s early 00’s, going from near bankruptcy to one of the most valuable and recgonized brands in history is nothing short of amazing. Their i devision has revolutionized the mobile industury for better or for worse. So it is only understandable that Apple will do everything with it’s multi-billion dollar reserves to prevent anyone from taking that crown. That all being said though I personally despise iOS and everything it stands for, tyrannically controlled mobile OS where something as simple as selecting a default web browser isn’t possible. Microsoft was sued and lost a case in Europe because they were shipping IE with Windows XP, nothing even close as what Apple is doing. This is just one of many uncompetitive practices, don’t even get me started about the way they handle multimedia.

Another thing that gets my panties all bunched up is Apple’s faithful. Just last week I was sitting at a Starbucks with my daughter, I had just bought here a Lenovo ThinkPad 8 for school. She wanted a tablet for school that would also able to handle simple word processing, Wikipedia, Facebook, some games, etc. We settled on the Thinkpad because of the power to price ratio, build quality, screen resolution, size and the free MS Office. We were in the middle of setting it up when a, I guess you can call him a hipster, sitting across from us stuck his nose up from his iPad and said, I’m sure you wished daddy would have bought you an iPad.” God bless here soul she simply replied, “not if it would mean that I would become a douche bag like yourself .” My daughter was the one who chose the ThinkPad, I told her if she wanted an iPad or something else it wouldn’t be a problem but she insisted. A lot of her friends have iPads and she doesn’t want to be like everyone else, she also really wanted to run FruityLoops and AudioTool which is a Flashed based web app.

I really like her ThinkPad and frankly she was smart in choosing it, the iPad doesn’t come close to the power and functionally of a good Windows 8 tablet. That was apparent the first night when I walked into her room and she was streaming a movie to her TV via Miracast, had Skype up in the left side of the screen on her tablet, posting a comment in Facebook on the right hand of screen and uploading music to her phone in background, four different apps running simultaneously. Something that would be impossible on a tablet that not only cost 200 dollars more but and additional 100 for for the camera kit, HDMI dongle and cable. People aren’t stupid, they will catch on to this racket.

So if someone has an iPad he must be an Apple faithful and all faithfuls are like him. Like him meaning telling people they should buy Apple stuff, not getting insulted by kids.

I have a Windows 8.1 tablet and an iPad Air. This is really comparing apples and oranges (pun intended).

A Windows tablet is a real computer and very awkward to use without a keyboard and mouse. Only in landscape mode can it effectively be used.

On the iPad runs true tablet software, optimized and geared towards the iPad. It’s just no competition compared to software designed to run on a real computer with a keyboard and mouse. While more limited an iPad runs circles around a Windows tablet when it comes to speed and usability.

I’m not even getting in to all the problems my Windows “tablet” has displayed and the screen that’s just too small for stuff like Outlook and Visual Studio.

I do like it for Nexflix watching, which often doesn’t work the first, second, third time, but after a while it does and for making handwritten notes and doodles in OneNote (desktop version, the Metro one is too buggy). The keyboard has a battery that extends the tablet one’s making it last for a very long time.

If your daughter needs a computer for school then yes, a Windows computer is a better choice than an iPad. But if you need a tablet, an iPad is a real tablet and a Windows 8 one isn’t.

So if someone has an iPad he must be an Apple faithful and all faithfuls are like him. Like him meaning telling people they should buy Apple stuff, not getting insulted by kids.

…except for one minor problem: calden never actually said that, or even implied it. Though it was impressive the way you were able to simultaneously make a strawman argument AND commit the fallacy of reductio ad absurdum.

And I DID enjoy your (oh, let’s say “subtle”) attempt to spin calden’s anecdote – by re-framing the obnoxious iFanboy’s behavior as merely “telling people they should buy Apple stuff,” while trying to imply that his daughter was the one at fault (when, at WORST, she was merely responding-in-kind). Especially the cheap shot about “getting insulted by kids,” after you conveniently glossed over the fact that the iHipster in calden’s example was ALSO a kid.

A Windows tablet is a real computer and very awkward to use without a keyboard and mouse.

lol wut? If you’re going to compare Windows tablets with iPads, maybe you should try using a Windows tablet made AFTER 2005…

We were in the middle of setting it up when a, I guess you can call him a hipster, sitting across from us stuck his nose up from his iPad and said, I’m sure you wished daddy would have bought you an iPad.”

A**holes are in every community. News at 11.

A lot of her friends have iPads and she doesn’t want to be like everyone else

Let’s hope Windows 8 continues to be a failure so that she can continue to be different

People aren’t stupid, they will catch on to this racket.

Or maybe you are confusing the use case of a tablet with that of a laptop. The app selection and quality is miserable compared to iOS and Android, so yes you can run windows programs on it, but they will suck for touch interaction. The reality is that iOS and Android are better choices for most people wanting a good tablet experience, not that most people are deluded.

We were in the middle of setting it up when a, I guess you can call him a hipster, sitting across from us stuck his nose up from his iPad and said, I’m sure you wished daddy would have bought you an iPad.”

A**holes are in every community. News at 11.

Fanboy resorts to apologetics instead of acknowledging negative behavior from a fellow fanboy. Film at 12.

A lot of her friends have iPads and she doesn’t want to be like everyone else

Let’s hope Windows 8 continues to be a failure so that she can continue to be different

Cute.

If your goal was to demonstrate that the iHipster’s actions were SOP for Apple fanboys, then you’ve succeeded.

I’ve made an observation that I’ve modestly chosen to call “BallmerKnowsBest’s corolary to Godwin’s Law”. It states that:

“If someone is over the age 20 and has to resort to using the term ‘hater’ to describe someone they disagree with, then that person is a fanboy. When someone sinks to level, it is a de-facto admission not only of defeat, but of their inability to make or debate an actual argument.”

So far, that rule has been reliable enough that I haven’t encountered even a single exception – CERTAINLY not in the comments on this article.

I think it’s just amazing that someone who posts childish trolls, never submits any articles himself and likes to down vote people get voted up.

But why bother. I’ve submitted loads of articles, but I won’t anymore and I’ll even take it one step further and say goodbye to this site I’ve been visiting since it’s creation. I don’t want to be part anymore of childish people like you who sabotage any form of mature discussion.

And just when I was complaining about the lack of understanding and proper grasp/knowledge of the true nature of Apple vs Samsung now well-known and (in)famous judge Koh… though the cases may be different, trolls are always trolls and they should be dealt with in a simple manner, exposing their shameful acts, forcing public retractions and fining the daylights out of them!